Laputa: Castle in the Sky

Pazu is a boy who works as the apprentice for an engineer. One day while working, Pazu discovers a girl named Sheeta floating down from the sky. Sheeta is being tracked down by air pirates led by the old captain Dola and the military influenced by the government official, Muska, who are after the pendant that Sheeta carries with her. Pazu agrees to help protect Sheeta from both threats as they also try to uncover the secrets surrounding the legendary floating island known as Laputa, a place that Pazu’s pilot father was believed to had reached years ago.

Taking themes from an aborted earlier project that was eventually made in his absence as Secret of Blue Water, Miyazaki mixed these with elements of Gulliver's Travels and images from his tour of Wales after the miners' strike. With a believably human cast bickering over the remnants of the old order, only to eventually destroy it, it shares many elements with both its predecessor Nausicaä and Miyazaki's later Princess Mononoke. Shown on a double bill with two episodes of Miyazaki's TV series, Sherlock Hound. A lesser known 1980s dub also exists, commissioned by Tokuma and broadcast several times in English-speaking territories. This earlier variant is sometimes erroneously credited to Streamline Pictures, but was solely a Tokuma production, which was merely distributed in America by Streamline.